Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/250

 228 ON THE PwEPRESENTATION OF of the orchestra, and served both as lobbies and landings ^ The steps of the koTKov were again subdivided transversely into masses called KepKlS6<;, cmiei, or "wedges" {a a a), by stairs, KklfiaKe^ [qOO)-) running from one Scd^oyfjua to another, and converging to the centre of the orchestra. These stairs were called creX/^e?, or gangways, from their resemblance, mutatis mutandis, to the passage across the aeX/juara or ^vya of a trireme^, for they were flanked on both sides by spectators seated before and below one another, just as the creXi? running fore and aft in a galley passed between the rowers, the highest of the tliree benches being always behind the middle tier, and this again being behind the lowest. As it seems that there were eleven tiers of seats between each Sid^oi/jLa in the theatre at Athens, the diazoma itself being counted as the twelfth row, we shall understand the allusion in Aristophanes {Equites, 546) : aipecrd' avT(^ ttoXi) t6 pdOiov, irapairi[i'^aT i<f)' ^vdeKa /cwTrats ddpv^ov XPV^TOU r]vaiTr)v — " raise for him a plash of applause in good measure, and waft him a noble Lensean cheer with eleven oars," for each /c€pKL<i would suggest the idea of eleven benches of rowers, and the applause demanded by the chorus would come like the plash of eleven oars striking the water ^ at once. Different parts of the theatre received different names from the class of the spectators to whom they were appropriated. Thus, the lower seats, nearest to the orchestra, which were assigned to the members of the council {^ovXi]), and others who had a right to reserved seats {'TrpoeSpla), were called /SovXevrtKo^ toito^, and the young men sat together in the ic^rjjBiKo^ t6ito<^^. The spectators ^ The view which has been given of the theatre at Aspendus shows the correspond- ing parts of these 2wcecinctiones ; but in the theatre at Herculaneum there is no proper diazoma to separate the rows of seats, which run above each other in distinct galleries. ^ There is no doubt that the primary sense is the nautical, as given by Hesychius : ceKldes' to, /xera^ij dia<ppdy/jiaTa tCov dt.a.o'T'rj/JLdTwv rij^ vecos. Eustathius also and Julius Pollux connect creX^s with a-^Xfia. Phrynichus says (Anecd. Bekk. 62, 27): creXis j3LJ3iov' X^yerai d^ Kal ceXls dedrpov; bxit the use of (reXis to denote the intercolumnar space of a manuscript, and hence to signify the page of a book in general, is the latest use of the three, and is probably derived from the resemblance between the lines of seats in the theatre divided by gangways, and the lines of writing separated by inter- columnar spaces of blank paper. ^ See our paper *'0n the Structuj-e of the Athenian Trireme," Camh. Phil. Soc. Vol. X. Part I. ^ Va^' opa TOP dvdpa rrjs yvvaiKbi eu (SovXevTiKq). Aristoph. Aves, 794. On which the Scholiast remarks : ovtos tottos tov dedrpov, 6 dveifievos roh j3ovX€VTais, cos kuI 6 to?j